The main aim of my research is to understand the activity of single neurons and populations of neurons in the visual system, to uncover the neural correlates of perceptual decisions. I seek to understand how the visual system is wired up and to find simple mathematical expressions to describe its output. A goal for my research is to predict a neuron's responses to arbitrary, complex visual stimuli.

However, the activity in the visual system depends not only on visual stimuli, but also on what the rest of the brain is doing. My main effort, therefore, focuses on understanding how the visual system integrates sensory inputs from the eyes and lateral inputs from the brain. This work is done in close collaboration with Kenneth Harris, with whom I share the Cortical Processing Laboratory.

The long-term goal is a cohesive understanding of how the brain processes visual information. This goal probably won’t be achieved in my lifetime for the human brain, but for the mouse brain it might.